How to create a homepage that converts

Your homepage is critical online real estate for your business. It’s all the most important features of your brand summarized onto one page–who you are, what you do, and who you serve. A homepage that converts is strategically designed and written to encourage your visitors to take a specific action that propels your business forward. For example, signing up for your newsletter, purchasing a product, or filling out a contact form. If your homepage isn’t converting, you’re leaving money on the table–let’s change that. Read on to discover 7 foolproof ways to increase conversion on your homepage.

1. Start with a clear headline

Your headline is most likely the first thing users see when they land on your site. An effective headline concisely states who your brand serves and how. This is important–if you don’t have a clear headline, your visitors are more likely to bounce. They don’t have time to browse around your site just to figure out what you actually do. Clear messaging and an intuitive user experience are key to creating a homepage that converts.

2. Highlight your top services and features

A homepage that converts must highlight the services or products your brand offers. In fact, 86% of website visitors expect to find this information on your homepage. This section doesn’t need to be terribly detailed. Share just enough information to entice your visitors and make them think, “Hey, this sounds like something I need!” If that’s the case, they’ll want to click through to your services or products page. From there, they can make an informed decision on whether to convert into a lead, customer, or subscriber.

3. Introduce yourself

Having an about section on your homepage is a great way to create a personal connection with your visitors. People like working with and purchasing from other people. This section should be fairly simple–a photo and brief paragraph is all you need to introduce yourself and show that there’s a real, live human (or team of humans) behind the scenes.

4. Build credibility with testimonials

Testimonials are powerful. You can talk all day about how great your brand is, but at the end of the day, you’re clearly biased. Social proof can make or break someone’s decision to buy from you. I like to sprinkle testimonials throughout the site with a focus on the homepage and services page. If you have a lot of testimonials, you can even create a separate page for them. But at minimum, include at least two testimonials on your homepage in order to benefit from the power of social proof in converting your website users.

5. Invite users to join your email list

If you don’t have an email list for your business, clear your schedule and go sign up for an email marketing service right now. Just kidding. But do it soon (I recommend Flodesk)! Email marketing is one of the best and most enduring tools for growing both product and service-based businesses. Social media platforms come and go–email is here to stay. In order to get someone to sign up for your list, you need some kind of incentive, or lead magnet.

Once someone signs up for your lead magnet, you can send out newsletters or an automated nurture sequence to build your know-like-trust factor, and then ultimately, make the sale. It’s a process, and it all starts with a strategic homepage that converts website visitors into email subscribers.

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Bonus: Share your recent blog posts

I’m calling this one a bonus tip because not every business website has a blog. That said, I highly recommend all businesses to consider creating one–read this post to find out why. Blog posts (like this one!) are a great way to establish authority in your niche, warm up cold leads, and get more free traffic to your website. The only downside, if you can call it that, is that writing blog posts is time consuming and doesn’t necessarily lead to immediate results. It’s a long game, but your business is in it for the long run, right? Share blog posts on your homepage to direct visitors to posts with relevant, valuable content. Each blog post should include a newsletter signup form. If your content resonates, boom, you have a new subscriber and potential customer.

Bonus: Display your Instagram feed

My final tip for you is a bonus tip because I don’t recommend it for everyone. If you’re actively using Instagram to connect with your ideal clients and grow your business, go ahead and add your feed to the bottom of your homepage. On the other hand, if you’re posting on IG sporadically without any kind of strategy, it’s better to sit this one out for now. Instagram is great for building connections, and if you’re in a creative field, it’s a great way to show off your skills. Just make sure that your feed is “on brand” so that it doesn’t clash aesthetically with your website.

Need help getting that homepage of yours to convert? I got you. My speciality is designing strategic websites built for conversion. Get in touch to start the process today.